


no such roses

by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 09:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20673326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: Now it’s enough, she thinks, to know that he’s alive. She doesn’t even care that he isn’t happy, and she knows she should—but he’s alive. He’s alive, and so it doesn’t matter that he was lying dead on her bed. His life wasn’t sliced through with a fingernail. It didn’t bleed out on her plum-colored sheets.(Giles and Jenny deal with the aftermath of Giles's death--or, more accurately, Jenny's inability to let Giles stay dead.)





	no such roses

**Author's Note:**

> i have always been of the mind that, had giles died in passion instead of jenny, jenny would have burned down 90% of sunnydale trying to get giles back. which would have been a very different and extremely terrifying s2.
> 
> snagged the title from shakespeare's sonnet 130 !!

Jenny is not the woman Giles remembers.

Jenny stares at him with bright, empty eyes when she sees him, and she doesn’t run to pull him into her arms. Buffy and the children are clustered around Giles, all of them sobbing about miracles and well-placed wishes and the like, but Jenny looks blank, and hollow, and nothing like the woman he had kissed goodbye at the door to her classroom.

_I love you, _he’d said. _I’m so glad that—_and he had trailed off, unable to articulate what their reconciliation meant to him.

_I love you too, _she’d said, then, _I’m going to fix things. _He hadn’t known what that had meant until Drusilla had told him (Angelus’s soul, restored, for love of him and Buffy and the not-that-fictitious Jenny Calendar), and then he had felt a fierce, violent surge of pride on his love’s behalf as Drusilla had sliced his throat.

He feels no such thing now, looking at her. He buries his face in Buffy’s hair and tries not to think about what he wants to say to her. There are many things he wants to say to her. None of them are words for a woman willing to bend the forces of nature to get him back.

* * *

And then he is facing her, alone. And she is looking up at him with those beautiful brown eyes, and there is nothing of her left. The woman he loved died with him, he realizes. The woman he is standing in front of is someone else entirely.

“Tell me,” she says.

Giles doesn’t know where to begin.

She drops to her knees in front of him. Reverent. “Tell me, Rupert,” she says, and there’s a trace of that old longing in her eyes.

“I don’t have the words,” says Giles, “to tell you how angry, how _disappointed—_”

Jenny utters a choked little sob, but it’s more happy than anything. Her smile is bright, her eyes drinking him in. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I couldn’t—I wasn’t strong enough to let you go. They needed you here. You know that.”

It wasn’t as though Giles had been anywhere pleasant. His misspent youth had tied his soul to a place he wasn’t exactly hell-bent on returning to. But the Jenny Calendar he had fallen in love with was…headstrong, yes, but still _sensible _about it. Still reasonable enough not to break the rules of magic, kill an age-old demon, and nearly kill _herself _to bring him back. It infuriates him, that she would put her own life so easily and thoughtlessly at risk. It makes him question how well he really knew her—but not in the hurt, petulant way of Angelus. This is more frightening, and more real.

“Jenny,” he says quietly. “I—”

He feels as though he is seeing the worst of her, laid bare.

She continues to look up at him, eyes wide and bright. “I’m sorry,” she says again, and he knows that for his sake she means it. What frightens him more than that is the fact that she wouldn’t have meant it for anyone else. “I just, I just couldn’t let you go, Rupert, not—they had you laid out on my bed and your blood was still _soaking _through my sheets.” She’s shaking. “And I couldn’t—there was no way I could let that be the end. That shouldn’t have to happen to you.”

“Death happens like that, sometimes, in my line of work,” says Giles. “I had thought you understood that.”

“No,” says Jenny. “No, I-I don’t. I don’t understand it, and I _won’t _understand it, because I _love _you, and you deserve a long, _nauseatingly _happy life—”

“Never have I asked for that,” says Giles. He doesn’t say _no matter how much I wanted it. _He doesn’t say _I was starting to dream of a life with you. _“A Watcher’s burden—”

“Fuck the Watchers,” says Jenny. She’s shaking. “_Fuck _the Watchers if they just let you die.”

“For the good of the many—”

“I get to be as goddamn selfish as I want when my boyfriend turns up dead on my bed,” says Jenny. She’s angry, now, no longer dazed and empty and punch-drunk on her own success. “I’m not asking you to be happy with me, Rupert. I know this wasn’t my choice to make. I just—” She stops, shaking. “I couldn’t let things—I couldn’t leave things like that.”

Giles wants to bridge the gap between them and take her hands. He doesn’t know how.

* * *

Life returns to Jenny slowly, and haltingly, in confusing bits and pieces. She feels as though she might have been dead—as though some vital, vibrant part of her snapped off and died the moment she saw her Rupert lying dead on that bed. And she _hates _it, because she has _never _before loved someone to the point that they became irreplaceable. She had never let herself love like that before, and now—

Now it’s enough, she thinks, to know that he’s alive. She doesn’t even care that he isn’t happy, and she _knows _she should—but he’s alive. He’s alive, and so it doesn’t matter that he was lying dead on her bed. His life wasn’t sliced through with a fingernail. It didn’t bleed out on her plum-colored sheets.

Buffy is the only one who really understands why Jenny made the decision that she did. Willow is angry because Rupert is angry, and Xander doesn’t seem to know what to make of the whole affair, but Buffy loved (loves?) Rupert just as much as Jenny. Buffy knows what it feels like to know yourself stupid and selfish and hurting.

“He might never forgive you,” she says, both of them stretched out on Jenny’s bed. Buffy has taken to spending a lot of time at Jenny’s, largely because her mom still doesn’t really get why Mr. Giles’s death hit her so hard. “He doesn’t seem to know how to do it.”

“I can live with that,” says Jenny.

Honestly, she hadn’t thought past getting Rupert back. She hadn’t even considered resuming their relationship—only that he had to be safe, and alive, and protected. That he would never get hurt like that again. That’s probably not a good thing, Jenny thinks, her making the big choices for him, but—god, she couldn’t care less when she’s living in the same world as him again.

* * *

It takes some time for Giles to adjust. The children are gentler with him, at first, but eventually they begin to slip tentatively back into their old patterns—pizza grease on Giles’s books, mud on the linoleum, loud music playing at ridiculous hours to keep them all awake through research—and things in that arena begin to feel normal again. Giles has nightmares about Drusilla, and nightmares about when his soul was tied to that demonic hell-place, but Giles has always had nightmares about things like that. The dreams anchor him, in the strangest ways.

The one thing he cannot regain is Jenny. Or, rather, his connection with Jenny. Thrice broken, it isn’t something he thinks he can mend again. He has seen a side of her that he cannot paint over or laugh off, and he doesn’t know how to love someone he feels he never knew at all.

* * *

Jenny teaches computer science at the local high school. Occasionally, she is a resource for an intrepid band of supernatural demon-fighters. She decides to let these facts define her life, and tries her best to lock away the part of her that melts at Rupert Giles’s boyish smile.

And it can’t work. But it doesn’t matter, because it has to work. She will never forget the horror and disgust in his eyes as he looked at her after coming back from the grave. She will never forget the way he said _I don’t have the words to tell you how angry— _

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s alive. That’s all she cares about.

* * *

They’re at the Bronze. The children are dancing, and laughing, and Giles is reminded of the year before, when he danced with Jenny for the first time. He remembers her soft, sweet smile, remembers his hands on her waist and her hands on his chest, remembers thinking _I want this to happen again. _There was a sweet simplicity to the moment—a bizarre kind of innocence—and he misses the Rupert and Jenny who fit so easily and effortlessly together on the dance floor.

Jenny is standing next to him, watching the children with tired eyes—and the first time since his return, Giles feels a twinge of sympathy. The emotion shocks him. Has he really not thought about what this must have been like, for her? Losing him?

And then he thinks some more—about the man he was, ever so long ago—and realizes what losing Jenny could have made him into. And he realizes that no matter what he had become, Jenny would still have loved him, because the strength of Jenny’s love for him would rip apart the world. _Has _ripped apart the world, in a sense.

He turns to her. She looks up at him. “Do you remember when we danced, last year?” he asks clumsily.

Jenny nods. “Feels a lot longer than a year ago,” she says quietly.

“I quite agree,” says Giles.

There is a long silence, during which Giles is swept up into quite a bit of self-loathing. How could he have been deluded enough to believe he’d known anything about Jenny? He turns her into a mystery, a beloved treasure, a deceitful spy—and never once had she just been _Jenny, _to him. The mystery that was Ms. Calendar would never have kissed him to begin with. The treasure that was his half-remembered Jenny would have pined, silently, and never given her heart to any other. The deceitful spy who never really existed would never have grieved at all.

“Rupert?” says Jenny. “Do you _want _to dance?”

And for the first time, Giles looks at her and sees something new. No longer is Jenny Calendar an idealized love affair, or a happy ending: in front of him is a woman who hasn’t quite put herself back together just yet. And he still doesn’t know if he can forgive her for bringing him back (or, for that matter, if she can ever forgive him for dying), but he rather thinks he’d like to try his hand at getting to know her.

“I’d like to get out of here,” he says, and he takes her hand.

Jenny’s face trembles and she pulls her hand away. This takes Giles aback. He’d been expecting—he didn’t know _what, _exactly, but he’d assumed that if she’d wanted him back so badly—

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” she says, “but you’ve made your position pretty clear, and I’ve been respecting that. I know you think that what I did was wrong, and I don’t care, and I’m not willing to bend on that. This world is better for having you in it.”

“That wasn’t your choice to make,” says Giles. He can’t keep the resentment out of his voice.

“Exactly,” says Jenny, and looks Giles directly in the eyes, and _oh—! _That spark of angry self-awareness, the flush in her cheeks, the stubborn combativeness of the woman he would have easily died a thousand deaths for, he’s _missed _her, he didn’t realize how _much _until right now—

“Rupert,” says Jenny. “As long as I feel one hundred percent okay about what I did to you, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be in your life.” She gives him a small, terse smile. “Something broke in me when you died,” she says. “I know that I’m never gonna get it back. I—” She swallows, eyes wet, and says, “I am never going to be the woman you fell in love with. Ever again.”

“I don’t mind that,” says Giles. Jenny scoffs. “Oh, don’t—” Irritated, he crosses his arms and fixes her with an angry look of his own. “Don’t _scoff _at me before you’ve even heard my reasoning!” he says. “Perhaps I don’t know you, but it’s safe to say you don’t know me either after what I’ve been through! I spent a good few months being _tortured _by the Sleepwalker, I now know what it’s like to _die, _and—”

They’re standing very close, now.

“I am never going to be the man you put your life on the line for,” says Giles. “I was never worth that. And frankly, the only reason I’ve had so much trouble with what you did is the fact that you put someone at risk who I died to protect.”

“Buffy was never at risk!” Jenny objects immediately, equally infuriated. “I kept all of the kids in the dark about this! _No _one knew, Rupert, I went through the _entire _process of resurrecting you by myself, and I made _sure _that the only person at risk was—” And then she stops, and her face goes very pale.

Giles doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t really need to.

“Oh,” says Jenny. Her voice breaks. “Oh. I thought—but you—”

“When Drusilla killed me,” says Giles, “she told me that she needed to neutralize you. She wanted to know if I was important enough to you that killing me would stop you from restoring Angel’s soul.” He looks directly into her eyes. “She said that if I wasn’t, she’d just have Angelus kill you instead.”

Jenny makes a small, horrible noise. Tears are spilling down her face.

“I told her that killing me would ruin you,” Giles says. He remembers the moment with crystal clarity: remembers thinking _do I save myself for Buffy’s sake, or sacrifice myself for Jenny’s? _He remembers thinking of Jenny’s soft, bright smile when she said _I’m going to fix things. _He remembers the soul spell, and the possibility of happiness for Buffy and Angel that his death might be able to bring about. “I told her that you would never be the same again. And she smiled, and—”

Jenny collapses.

It happens so fast that Giles only barely manages to catch her in his arms. She’s crying _loudly, _now, enough so that Giles sees the children turn; he pulls her securely against him as she wails into his jacket. She’s shaking almost violently, fingers clenched around his lapels, and he begins to make out bits and pieces of what she’s sobbing: “—my _fault!”_

Giles feels like his heart has shattered. This is the Jenny he remembers. This is the woman who, he realizes, is viscerally and truly _horrified _at what she has become. “Darling,” he whispers, and holds her just as tightly as she’s holding him.

“D-don’t,” Jenny forces out, “don’t forgive me, Rupert, don’t _forgive _me, please—”

Giles tilts her head up. It takes some effort—she’s curled herself tightly inward, and she keeps on trying to dodge his hands—but then he’s looking into wrecked eyes, resting his head against hers, and things are beginning to make sense again. “Shh,” he murmurs.

“I’m s-sorry,” Jenny sobs, “I know I sh-shouldn’t have—”

“What’s going on?” Buffy looks almost as shaken as Jenny, which says quite a lot. The other children hover back with worried expressions, but Buffy’s attention is entirely on Jenny. Things _have _changed, Giles thinks. “Giles, what happened? I’ve never seen her like this—”

“It’s all right, it’s handled,” says Giles immediately.

Buffy gives him a skeptical look.

Jenny shudders, hiccups, and hides her face in Giles’s neck. She’s beginning to stop shaking.

“Jenny’s having something of a delayed reaction to my death,” Giles says, which he thinks is relatively close enough to the truth. “I’ll take care of her.”

“You two haven’t even been talking,” says Buffy flatly, “and you expect me to believe you’re gonna take care of her? You don’t know her, Giles.”

“I—”

“Not like I do.”

That throws Giles off. “I’m _sorry?”_

Buffy gives Giles a look. Then she says, “Who else was gonna get how it feels to lose you, Giles?”

And then Giles thinks he understands. Though the love of a partner and the love of a daughter are two very different things, they’re still compatible enough for two parties to develop some sort of a mutual understanding. “I promise I’ll take care of her, Buffy,” he says, this time with more certainty in his voice. “All right?”

Biting her lip, Buffy steps closer. She reaches up, tucking a strand of hair behind Jenny’s ear. Jenny turns her head to look, and very softly, Buffy says, “It’s okay, Ms. Calendar. It’s gonna be okay.”

Jenny gives Buffy a wobbly smile. Jerkily, her words still coming in hiccupy sobs, she says, “Aren’t—I—the one—who usually—says th-that to you?”

“Whatever,” says Buffy. “I’m flipping the script. You never really did get the time to have a total emotional breakdown.” She fixes Giles with another frankly terrifying look, then lets her hand drop, leading a concerned Willow and Xander out of the Bronze.

Giles watches them go. Then, careful not to let go of her, he begins to steer Jenny towards the exit as well.

* * *

At his apartment, Giles wraps Jenny in a warm blanket and makes her a cup of tea. She drinks it in silence, looking wrung-out and sad, but she’s still more present than he’s seen her since—well. Since before his death.

He sits down next to her, and starts to talk. He’s not sure what about. A story about kissing Ethan for the first time becomes a story about punching out a vampire by accident when he was fifteen becomes a story about family dinners at the Giles estate. Jenny’s eyes begin to droop halfway through the cup of tea; he takes it from her, then lies her down on the sofa, tucking her in.

Half-asleep, she reaches for him. “I miss you,” she murmurs.

Giles takes her hand and holds it to his cheek. “I’m right here,” he says.

“You weren’t,” says Jenny, eyes cloudy. “I was so scared a-and so stupid—”

“But I’m here now, aren’t I?” All Giles is focused on right now is comforting her. He’s glad he’s finally in a place where he _can. _She’s lost her way, certainly, but he thinks he’s beginning to understand why it’s happened. “I love you so much,” he says. “I’m so proud—”

Jenny makes a pained noise.

Right. Love and pride isn’t what she wants to hear from him right now. After a moment of consideration—he is certainly _not _going to rip her character to shreds just to make himself feel better—Giles kneels down next to her, letting go of her hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. Jenny looks up at him, still only a few seconds from falling asleep.

“I love you,” he says again, stupidly, even though it hadn’t worked the first time. The perfect words don’t come to him when she’s looking at him like that.

“I miss you,” says Jenny again. Her voice breaks.

Giles lies down on the floor, reaching up to take her hand again, and watches her quietly until she falls asleep. There are still tear tracks on her face. He can’t quite bring himself to get up off the floor—he’s half-afraid that if he does, she’ll wake up to an empty room and believe him dead again—so he continues to study her, trying to ignore how uncomfortable the floor is on his back, until he drifts off himself.

* * *

Jenny wakes up feeling as though someone has put her through a blender. She rolls onto her back, staring up at a ceiling she only half-recognizes, and disjointed memories come back to her. She rolls onto her side, and sees that Rupert is asleep on the floor.

She sits up. She doesn’t feel quite as wrecked as before, but she also doesn’t feel all that great. Running a hand through her hair, Jenny is beginning to contemplate her next course of action when—

From the floor, Rupert lets out a strangled gasp. Jenny turns, and sees that one of his hands is pressed against his neck, as if he’s been hurt there, as if he’s been—

She realizes what’s happening and slides off the couch without really even having to think about it, shaking Rupert awake. “Rupert,” she says, voice breaking. “Rupert—”

Rupert opens his eyes, face pale. It takes him a few seconds to respond, and even then, his way of responding is to let his head fall forward against Jenny’s. He doesn’t say anything for a long few seconds. Then, very quietly, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be fucking _sorry,” _says Jenny, “you’ve done nothing wrong—”

Rupert looks up at her. “For everything I’ve put you through,” he says. “For all the grief I’ve caused you.”

Jenny swallows, hard. She hasn’t actually thought about herself in a very long time. “I’m fine,” she says reflexively, but when Rupert gives her a deeply skeptical look, she lets out a frustrated breath and says, “Yeah, okay, not really.”

Rupert gives her this lopsided smile and reaches up, gently stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Jenny,” he says, very softly, and that’s _it, _that’s really it, that’s all she can take. She falls forward into his arms again, hiding her face in his rumpled button-down.

“You died,” she whispers. She’s done crying, she thinks, at least for now, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still badly shaken. “And I found your body. And I don’t know how to possibly be okay with that.”

“You don’t have to be,” says Rupert. “I don’t think anyone’s asking you to.”

“The woman you loved wouldn’t have—”

“The woman I _love,” _says Rupert thoughtfully, “_did._”

_That _gets Jenny’s attention.

“It’s just a matter of me getting used to that, I think,” says Rupert. His hand frames her face, and with a quick, graceful sweep, his thumb wipes a tear from her cheek. “I think, when I came back, I thought that the wisest course of action was to cut all ties with you, because I believed you to have become someone entirely different from the Jenny Calendar I thought I knew. But if I’ve learned anything as of late, it’s that—”

Rupert has to stop for a second. His eyes are wet too. “It’s that you loved me just as much as you always said you did,” he says. “It’s that you’re smart, and stubborn, and angry, and bitter, and deeply, deeply compassionate. It’s that you _feel _things more than you _think _about things. It’s all the things I knew, only—channeled into a decision I didn’t condone. But that doesn’t change who you are.”

Jenny sobs. (So, okay, she might _not _be done crying.)

“You’re still the woman I fell in love with,” says Rupert. He sounds just as surprised to say that as Jenny is to hear it, and on some level, that makes her believe him just a little bit more. “It’s just been…reconfigured, I think.”

Jenny moves forward and hides her face in his neck again, letting out a shaking breath. She feels Rupert’s fingers tangle in her hair. “You have no idea,” she whispers, “no _idea _how much I missed you.”

“I think I have _some,_” says Rupert dryly, which makes Jenny let out a sobbing laugh into his neck.

* * *

Though their mutual feelings have been made clear, it’s nearly two years before they’re anything close to physically intimate again. Many things happen in the interim. An averted apocalypse or three, a disastrous attempt at Thanksgiving dinner, Willow stumbling through an awkwardly panicked coming-out speech (interrupted by a mortified Giles doing his best to explain that yes, he _does _understand what she’s going through), but woven into all of that is Jenny. Jenny, his friend, who he doesn’t kiss but he does _trust. _It feels more important to build back the trust than the kissing.

Jenny pieces herself back together, slowly. It takes her a very long time to forgive herself—much longer than it took Giles to forgive her. He tries his best to expedite the process, but there’s still only so much he can do. Still, he’s there as often as he can be, and she does the same for him.

The moment is surprisingly simple. There’s no apocalypse, no post-patrol adrenaline, nothing to shove them together like a crossbow bolt or a demon in the Internet: Jenny is washing the breakfast dishes in his kitchen, her hair cut short again like it used to be when the children were in high school, and Giles is struck with the realization—

“If my life had ended,” he says, “right then, I’d never have loved you properly.”

Jenny looks up, surprised. Slowly, she sets down the plate on the counter, wiping her hands on her jeans before turning to face him. “Rupert—”

“For the love of God, Jenny, use a dish towel,” says Giles.

“Don’t change the subject,” says Jenny. She’s smiling slightly. “I wanna hear more about this.”

Giles shrugs, heart fluttering. He hadn’t really meant to say it aloud, but he’s gotten in the habit of being honest with Jenny, and it’s frustratingly hard to break. Choosing his words with a bit more care this time, he says, “The way I feel about you now—when I compare it to what I thought love was back then—” He hesitates, still searching for the right way to say this. He feels as though this has to be perfect.

“God,” says Jenny. There’s a laugh in her voice. She steps closer, brushing something off of Giles’s shoulder. “You look like you’re about to blow a gasket. Do you want to take a rain check on the whole feelings talk?”

“No, I—”

“Try miming it,” says Jenny.

Giles gives Jenny a withering look. Then he says, “It really did take my getting killed for me to fully appreciate how terrible you can be at times.”

The statement takes both of them by surprise. For a moment, Giles feels as though he’s been too honest, and he’s opening his mouth to snatch his words back when Jenny stands on tiptoe and presses her lips to his. And then Giles is kissing her back, and this is the strangest part: it doesn’t feel monumental, like something he’s been deprived of for far too long. It simply feels like the natural next step. Her arms twine around his neck, her short hair falling forward to brush against his face, and—

“I love you,” he murmurs against her mouth. It’s not something she hasn’t heard over the last two years, but he still likes saying it.

He feels, rather than hears, Jenny’s soft little sigh as she melts into the kiss, her nose bumping clumsily against his. She’s the one to pull away, but it’s only to look up at him with a small, wobbly grin and say, “Jesus, England, really going for the jugular there, huh?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I-I love you too,” says Jenny. Her voice catches. “You know I do. I just never thought—”

“Oh, don’t be _ridiculous_,” says Giles, already seeing where this is going.

“—that you’d really still love me back _like that_—”

“Are we still on this? It’s been two years.”

“—or even consider kissing me again—”

“You are so terribly fucking melodramatic sometimes,” says Giles with a mixture of affection and exasperation. “And this is coming from the man who hung around your classroom giving you _dog eyes _until—”

“Puppy-dog eyes,” Jenny corrects immediately. She’s starting to really smile. It’s not the same brash, careless grin that stole Giles’s heart two years ago—it’s warmer. Happier. “So what you’re saying here is that my being terrible is somehow endearing to you?”

“Certainly not!” says Giles. “Only that real love stems from _understanding, _and not infatuation.”

Jenny starts laughing.

“What?”

“You were just so—” Jenny waves a hand. “So _quick _to shoot me down! _Certainly not! _Like, there’s _nothing _endearing about any of my flaws!” Her laughter is continuing, and it’s a sweet, musical sound that he didn’t fully appreciate the first time he was alive. Certainly he enjoyed the way her voice sounded, but he didn’t quite understand—it took Jenny nearly a year to truly laugh again after his death. Hearing her laugh now is a reminder of how far she’s come.

Giles smiles. He thinks it might be the first time he’s smiled quite like this. “Well,” he says. “I’m sure you’d rather a man who loves you with all your faults than an idiot who worships the ground you walk on.”

“And lucky for me, I’ve got both right here,” says Jenny, grinning like she thinks she’s the funniest person in the world.

“Oh, ha ha,” says Giles, and kisses her again.


End file.
